The Duchess

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Set at the end of the eighteenth century, The Duchess is a 2008 film from BBC Films and Pathé (distributed in America by Paramount), directed by Saul Gibb, with musical score by Rachel Portman, and starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes. The film is based on the life of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. While her beauty and charisma made her name, her extravagant tastes and appetite for gambling and love made her infamous. Married young to the older, distant Duke of Devonshire, who was blatantly unfaithful, Georgiana became a fashion icon, a doting mother, a shrewd political operator, intimate of ministers and princes, and darling of the common people. But at the core of the story is a desperate search for love. The film delves into Georgiana’s passionate and doomed affair with Earl Grey, the future Prime Minister, and the complex love triangle with her husband and her best friend, Lady Bess Foster.

Tropes used in The Duchess include:

• A Threesome Is Hot
• Break the Cutie: Dear God...
• Did Not Do the Research: The real Elizabeth Foster only had two sons with her first husband. She did also have a daughter though the daughter died eight days after her birth.
• Easily Forgiven: Georgiana forgives both the Duke and Bess in the end, despite all of the suffering they put her through (The Duke more than Bess of course).
• Happy Ending: Somehow...
• Jerkass: The Duke. Has shades of Jerkass Woobie towards the end.
• Les Yay: Between Georgiana and Bess to the point of being a Romantic Two-Girl Friendship.
• Marital Rape License
• Spirited Young Lady: Georgiana.
• The Stoic: The Duke.
• Table Space
• Your Cheating Heart: The Duke is very obvious about his affairs. Georgiana briefly has one with a Charles Grey but that ends badly.